[Event-related potentials and cognitive information processing: issues on the studies of selective attention]

Following considerations for some general issues of ERP research on human information processing, recent advances in this field are elaborated by reviewing the literature on selective attention. Sections in this review deal with following subjects: (1) two landmark contributions of Hillyard, Hink, Schwent, & Picton (1973) and Näätänen, Gaillard, & Mäntysalo (1978); (2) the endogenous, attention-related negativity ("Nd" wave), which is considered to consist of three possible components, a modalityspecific Nd, a centrally-maximal, controlled-search negativity, and a frontally-focused Nd; (3) the spatial attention effects on the exogenous components in visual and somatosensory modalities; and (4) the organizations of stimulus selection processes indicated by the latency and interrelations between those ERP components.